Art, media, opinion and ideas
(*With apologies to Fústar)There is a long tradition of criticism of the law. Criminals disdain it, anarchists decry it. In Oliver Twist, Dickens famously had Mr Bumble dub it an ass, but few can have expressed this criticism in terms as concise or as pithy as the author of the below maxim, found in a cubicle of the gents' toilet in the Law Library.
Two sites have popped up in the last few weeks doing things that ought really be done by the Oireachtas website, but probably never will be. Here's Mycandidate. ie, from the Rock the Vote people.
I have often suspected that if Michael McDowell was to be locked in a room on his own for anything longer than 2 hours, he would start a fight with himself. Today, that suspicion is confirmed. Under the headline "McDowell Rejects Mobile Phone Claims", RTE reports that "he [the minister] said that the allegation that the prison service had been colluding with prisoners over phone use was a serious one.
Have you ever scrolled through the user reviews on Amazon and noticed that no matter how overwhelmingly positive the general trend is, there’s always one jerk who gives a vitriolic one-star review? Even where the book in question is a classic, an acknowledged masterpiece, you can usually find one of these guys, denouncing an adornment of human accomplishment with poorly-spelled scorn, expressing ..
Turning and turning in the widening gyreThe falcon cannot hear the falconer;Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,-The Second Coming, WB YeatsYeats could have been channelling the spirit of the modern political campaign manager. For nearly twenty years political parties and candidates have been successful in imposing previously undreamed controls on campaigns.
Politics is not a horserace. And politicians, contrary to the misleading impressions given by some political correspondents, are not the primary deciders of their own fate. For months we've been treated to articles detailing poll results and trying to find a correspondence with the doings and transpirings of our elected representatives.
It is rare that a newspaper headline cannot be bettered, but the title of a front page story in this weekend’s Sunday Independent summed up the article so perfectly that no other words seem appropriate. First, the back story:The previous week, the Independent ran with a story about Bertie Ahern and a suitcase full of money. You may have heard about it.
Last Saturday's Irish Times opinion page, like most Saturdays, had a piece by Noel Whelan. In this the former FF candidate and FF electoral advisor with a weekly column in a national newspaper laid out the reasons why citizens ought not be permitted to state their opinions publically. It was, he argued unpersuasively, a danger to democracy.
A short time ago Cian Ginty of Blurred Keys very kindly sent me, amongst other bloggers, an invitation to go along to one of the Cleraun Media Forum sessions. These are monthly get-togethers where media professionals and anyone else "working / teaching / studying / interested in media" can meet to discuss some aspect of the profession.
Something we learned today; It won't be called this Thursday (26th April). Nor will it be called on Thursday of next week (4th May). Experts and watchers of this kind of things will be better placed than I to say when it might be called.
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